Nvu 1.0 has been released!
Version 1.0 of Nvu has been released, so take some time to update your copy. As I mentioned previously in this blog, I think Nvu is a great Web authoring tool and kudos are due to the development team for putting out such a great tool.
AdSense Tip #7: When NOT to use CSS
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are a great way to control how Web pages look. They make it easy to separate the presentation from the structure of the content. However, some people go overboard and use CSS in ways it shouldn't. When this happens, AdSense publishers often find that the ads being displayed on their sites are mistargeted. What's happening?
As I explain in Make Easy Money with Google, HTML is a markup language. Its primary purpose is to describe the structure of a Web page. Tags let you specify which parts are headings, which are paragraphs, what the title is, and so on. HTML tags also let you format text using tags like <i> and <b> to indicate italic and bold text, for example. However, much of the formatting was done poorly and it polluted the content — there were <font> tags all over the place and all kinds of tricks were done with <table> tags to get things to position where the Web page designers wanted them.
The emergence of CSS removed the need for many HTML formatting tricks, which is great. HTML returned to describing the structure of a document. However, there are a few tags that you should not remove. For example, don't remove the header tags (<h1> and so on). Don't remove <b> or <i> tags. The tags are used by AdSense and search engines to figure out which keywords are prominent and important in your content. If you take them out, you're making it harder for them to figure out what your content is all about. Leave them in, but take out the other formatting tricks.
Understanding the AdWords-AdSense relationship
Readers wanting a clearer — well, maybe not clearer, but certainly comprehensive — look at how AdSense and AdWords are related should look at the Google AdWords-AdSense Block Diagram, part of the Vaughns 1-Pagers site. Very interesting analysis, definitely worth looking at. Although I describe what AdWords is in Make Easy Money with Google and how it's really the flipside of AdSense, I don't spend a lot of time on it other than using it to find high-paying keywords like “vioxx lawsuit” or “mesothelioma” and their ilk. Vaughns' diagram of the AdWords-AdSense relationship is an interesting study.
Note, however, that Google often changes how AdWords and/or AdSense work at various times, so these kinds of explanations can be incorrect about some of the details. At the high level, though, it seems pretty accurate to me. Check it out!
Make Easy Money with Google reviewed on "O'Donnell on Technology"
Make Easy Money with Google was reviewed two days ago (Saturday, June 25) by Ron Rosberg on Bob O'Donnell's radio show O'Donnell on Technology. You can listen to the segment (it's about 35 minutes into the first hour) if you're curious. Ron called it a “well-written book”. Thanks Ron and Bob!
P.S.: Readers should feel free to visit Amazon
or Barnes and Noble and add their own reviews to the ones already there. I appreciate constructive feedback!
AdSense Tip #6: Carefully craft blog or forum pages
My series of AdSense tips continues with a tip closely related to AdSense Tip #1: Don't put ads on empty pages. This tip is AdSense Tip #6: Carefully craft blog or forum pages.
AdSense publishers often complain that the ads that get shown on blog and forum pages are not really that relevant to the topics being discussed. This is because the Mediapartners crawler — the crawler that fetches and analyzes pages that display AdSense ads — visits pages at unpredictable intervals. The first impression you make to that crawler, as discussed in Tip #1, is therefore extremely important. The first time the crawler visits your forum/blog there better be some relevant content on display there.
There's another problem with many blogs and forums: the keyword density is skewed by all the links and extra “fluff” found on the page. For example, many blogs have multiple feed links listed on the page. These are often images. If those images all have alt attributes that say something like “RSS feed for GoofySite.com, a blog about Goofy” then “blog”, “feed” and “Goofy” will have higher densities than you might expect, especially if (in this case) “Goofy” and “GoofySite.com” show up in other places on the page (links to the home page, links to other pages on the site, alt attributes for images, and so on). You shouldn't be surprised if all the ads you see for that blog end up being related to blogging and/or Goofy, and not necessarily the specific topics being discussed.
There's no predicting when the Mediapartners crawler shows up, so it's hard to tune things for it. You can control when the first crawl occurs, though, so spend some time tuning that first crawl by making sure the blog/forum is displaying the right kind of content. Use a keyword density checker on the page before you place ads on it to make sure things are OK, then activate AdSense for that page.
Note that you'll have better control over permalink pages and thread-specific pages, provided again that you don't have too much fluff on those pages, either.
If things are really bad, rename the page and place a redirect in the old page's place. I had to do this recently with my Vioxx page. In Make Easy Money with Google I point readers to the www.memwg.com/vioxx-withdrawal address for additional information about Vioxx. But the ads that were showing weren't well-targeted, because in my hurry to get the page up (there's another AdSense tip — take your time!) I had neglected to check the keyword density. But when I did, after the fact, it's because that “fluff” I mentioned above was overpowering the Vioxx-related keywords. So after I fixed the page I renamed it to www.memwg.com/vioxx-recall and changed the original to redirect to the new one. When I activated the ads on the new page, the crawler was able to correctly figure out what the keywords were and now the ads that are shown there are highly relevant.
The fix-and-rename technique works well, but it's not always possible to do it, in which case you just have to wait for the Mediapartner crawler to revisit your site. Perhaps Google's new sitemap feature will help in this regard, but I haven't done any experiments yet to know if that's true or not.
A companion site: vioxx-lawsuit-questions.info
The companion sites for the book aren't quite ready yet, as I ended up spending time reshooting all the screenshots not long before the book was printed and then dealing with some click fraud occuring on the Make Easy Money with Google site. In the meantime, however, you can have a look at the Vioxx
Lawsuit Questions site, a site I developed last year to present information related to the Vioxx recall. It makes extensive use of AdSense.
Vioxx attorneys and the Vioxx recall: high-paying keyword examples
Additional material for the book can be found in the Vioxx recall and Vioxx lawsuit pages, examples of the kind of things you can do with AdSense and high-paying keywords. Notice how well the ads are targeted to the content. It sometimes takes work to get the right ads to display, which is why keyword density analyzers are useful tools. There are links like this to additional material sprinkled throughout Make Easy Money with Google.
AdSense Tip #5: Manage your own AdSense account
My series of AdSense tips (the inspiration for my AdSense book Make Easy Money with Google) continues with a tip about who should control an AdSense account. This tip comes directly from a conversation I had with someone who had been ripped off. Why were they ripped off? Because they weren't in control of their AdSense account.
For some sites, an AdSense account is like a license to print money. Now, most sites aren't making thousands of dollars a month from AdSense, but it's very feasible for niche sites to make a hundred or more dollars a month — see Rick's recent entry on Feedbuzzard, for example. Whether you're making a lot or not so much, it's still extra income that should be coming your way.
I say should because the reality is that many people outsource the management of their sites third parties. Not everyone has the time or the expertise to develop their own Web pages (though it's not that's difficult to learn the basics, as I show in Make Easy Money with Google), so outsourcing the development and maintenance of a site may make sense in many cases. But don't outsource the management of your AdSense account or, worse yet, let someone else use their own account to display ads on your site. The AdSense account should be registered in your name (or the name of your business), not in anyone else's name. The money should be sent to you directly, as should the tax information. If you want to give the guys maintaining your site a cut of the revenue, fine, but do it yourself from the money that Google sends you, don't have the money sent to Google.
For similar reasons, make sure that the ownership and control of your domain name rests with you and not a third party. Your domain name (or domain names, it's common to have more than one, even if they just point to the same site) is a valuable resource, it's part of your brand. Take the time to learn how to use a domain name registrar (it's easy) and manage the names yourself. If you ever have problems with your hosting service, for example, you won't be held hostage by them (you do have local backup copies of your website, don't you?) if you control the domain name — there are plenty of web hosting companies out there eager for your business.
Read my interview with The Waterloo Chronicle
If you're curious to know more about me (and what I look like!), check out the Going gaga for Google, an interview I did with The Waterloo Chronicle about the publication of Make Easy Money with Google. The Waterloo Chronicle is a weekly community newspaper based in (naturally) Waterloo, Ontario, where I live.
Also, be sure to check out the book's listing on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca for the first reader review. Looking forward to hearing from more readers now that Amazon's finally shipping the book.
The three types of click fraud: enriching, depleting and disbarring
When I talk to people about AdSense and my book Make Easy Money with Google, the topic of click fraud often comes up. There are three types of click fraud possible, and I categorize them this way: enriching click fraud, depleting click fraud, and disbarring click fraud. See my article explaining click fraud (additional material for readers of my book) for more details on these classifications.
And yes, as I've reported before in The
price of pay-per-click is eternal vigilance, somebody keeps trying to use MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com to commit click fraud, which is annoying me to no end. See the article for more on that, too.
Barnes and Noble calls Make Easy Money with Google "refreshingly simple"
Barnes & Noble has just reviewed my new AdSense book, Make Easy Money with Google and this is what they had to say about it:
Want to make a few extra bucks? Maybe more? Google’s AdSense program could be just the ticket. Run Google’s ads on your site, earn cash from the click-throughs you generate. Make Easy Money with Google is a refreshingly simple guide to getting ready for AdSense, getting started with it, and driving more profits from it. (Don’t even have a site to host Google’s ads? No worries: Eric Giguere helps you build one.)
This book is for ordinary people, not professional marketers or web developers. You’ll walk through developing content and design for a site that’s likely to be successful with AdSense. You’ll learn how to join AdSense, choose ad formats, track performance, drive more traffic, improve your clickthrough rates — and earn more cash. You may not get rich, but following Giguere’s steps could be well worth your while.
That review by Bill Camarda will be in the B&N's July newsletter. See the Barnes & Noble entry for Make Easy Money with Google for more details.
First Nvu, now Firefox: Safely browsing the Web
Previously, I mentioned how my AdSense Book Make Easy Money with Google used the open source Nvu web authoring application to demonstrate how easy it is to build Web pages without any programming. Well, Nvu isn't the only open-source software I use in the book: most of the browser screenshots feature the Firefox browser. And this is what Stef, one of the characters in the book, had to say about Firefox:
At my college, they don't even let us run Internet Explorer anymore, because it caused too many problems. Now we all use the free Firefox browser. I haven't seen a pop-up for a while now.
And it's true, Firefox makes Web browsing a safer, less annoying experience. You can also get nifty
extensions for Firefox that simplify your life as an AdSense publisher. Get Firefox now!
Some Amazon glitches and book references
If you're wondering why Amazon isn't listing Make Easy Money with Google as being available, it's apparently some glitch with several of Peachpit Press' new books, mine included. The book is definitely shipping and in some stores already, it should be in general distribution across North America within a few days.
Some blog references to the book: an early review of my AdSense book on Feedbuzzard and a mention in the online section of AdJab. Hopefully more coming, what with the Canadian author publishes book about making money with Google press release that was sent out today.
The price of pay-per-click is eternal vigilance
Alright, I'm paraphrasing that famous quote, “The price is vigilance is eternal vigilance” (commonly attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but he didn't actually phrase it that way), but an email I received yesterday asked me some good questions about pay-per-click advertising and click fraud:
Do you know if there is anything that a site owner can do to prevent their sites being attacked by a spider or application designed to purposely click on their Google ads?
It just strikes me that in order to stay with Google you need to be either very lucky not to be attacked or else proactive in defending your site against such an attack.
Is there anything we AdSense publishers can do to prevent click fraud? Not specifically, no. All we can do, really, is watch our earnings summaries and server logs for unusual patterns and tell Google about them if we think our sites have been used for click fraud. Sometimes it's pretty obvious, as I reported recently in my blog about the automated
click fraud that was occurring on my site, where someone was fetching my home page every 20 seconds from different machines and clicking on ads (I assume on a competitor's ad) every second or third time. (Though I'm perplexed as to why they'd do it so noticeably… like you don't think a new, small site like Make Easy Money with Google wouldn't notice this kind of thing? And yes, I'm still in discussions with Google, trying to help them track it down.) Small-time click fraud is much harder to track and avoid, I think, and I'm not sure there's much you can do there. But this is why Google's AdSense program policies specifically forbid you from encouraging visitors to click ads.
The letter continues:
For example is there any way that the robots.txt file can be used to block out spiders which have proven to be malicious?
The answer is “no”, for the robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is not something that can be enforced, it's like good behavior in polite society. A well-behaving, legitimate crawler will look for and obey the instructions in your robots.txt file, a misbehaving crawler won't.
I think that it would be useful to compile a list of sites which are being used to launch such attacks and share this list with the general Google Adsense community.
I would imagine that Google maintains its own list of “banned” sites whose clicks don't count. The problem with these lists, of course, is that legitimate IP addresses can be used by the click fraud artists, either through IP spoofing or by using the machine as a zombie process.
Is this being too simplistic?
No! These are good things to be thinking about. Though there's not much you can do about click fraud on an individual basis, together we and Google (and, presumably, Yahoo! once it comes out of beta with its pay-per-click system) can work together to minimize the problem.
In the end, though, it's the advertisers that will make the ultimate call. If pay-per-click advertising doesn't work because of click fraud, they'll go looking for alternatives. This is why Google and Yahoo! are so interested in combating click fraud — they don't want to lose those revenue streams!
Legal notes on copyright and other important matters for Web site owners
Happy Father's Day! It's still not too late to order my AdSense book for your father!
In any case, in Chapter 3 of Make Easy Money with Google I discuss copyrights, plagiarism and other related issues. A great resource that all Web site owners — that's you! — should explore is Ivan Hoffman's articles for Web site owners and designers. These are a treasure trove of information written by a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property issues. I highly recommend it. (Note that Mr. Hoffman's articles are based on United States law.)
Press Release: Canadian Author Publishes New Book On Making Money With Google
With Google's AdSense program, computer users of all ages across the world can make money from their blogs and Web sites
WATERLOO, ONTARIO, CANADA - June 17, 2005 — Canadian author Eric Giguere has just published a new consumer computer book called “Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising System“. This book for non-technical computer users walks them through the process of creating profitable blogs and Web sites, with no programming required. The sites make money using Google's AdSense program, the easiest way for the average person to tap into the ever-increasing online advertising revenue pool.
The book is written in a breezy, conversational style and lacks the complicated jargon found in many computer books. The chapters are linked together by a narrative that follows three of the author's friends as they use the techniques described in the book to build their own money-making sites and blogs, a style reminiscent of easy-to-understand books like The Wealthy Barber.
According to a recent report by Merrill Lynch, online ad spending in the United States alone is expected to grow by 29% this year to 12.4 billion dollars. Google's AdSense program makes it possible for individuals to participate in this growth by monetizing content that they already own and any new content they create.
Early reviews praise the book for its approachability. “People will find this book useful,” says author and AdSense user C. Enrique Ortiz, “and will learn not only about Google, but also about the Web.” Others appreciate its real world examples and the use of characters they can identify with.
About the Author
Eric Giguere is a writer and software developer residing in Waterloo, Ontario, who has written three books and hundreds of articles about computers and computer programming. Having discovered how easy it was to make money from his own Web site using Google's AdSense program, he decided to write a non-technical book about it that his father could understand and enjoy reading.
Table of contents and more details are available from www.MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com
Book Summary
Title — Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program
Author — Eric Giguere
Publisher — Peachpit Press (Pearson)
ISBN — 0321321146
Softcover, full-color, 254 pages, US$24.99/CA$34.99
Available today from all booksellers and book distributors.
Make Easy Money with Google is now shipping!
Finally, after months of writing, capturing screen shots and preparing this Web site, I'm happy to say that Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program is finally shipping. Read the press release for more information. I received my own copies of the book yesterday and I'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out. The cover is particular striking, I find — and no, I had nothing to do with that, it's the work of a professional graphic designer.
I look forward to hearing from my readers! I'll be posting updates and other related information here in this blog, of course.
The Make Easy Money with Google Affiliate Program (Sort Of) — Help Promote My Book!
With the imminent (tomorrow!) release of Make Easy Money with Google, I thought it would be nice to have some way to reward readers and others who spread the word about my book. But I didn't want to go through the effort of setting up an actual affiliate program. Then I slapped my head and said (in my best Homer Simpson voice) “Duh!”, because there's already an affiliate program out there that I can use: Amazon's!
So here's what I did: if you link to my site and you have an Amazon Associates account, just embed your Amazon Associates ID in the link URL and I'll substitute it in place of mine in all the Amazon links on the MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com site. Just append it as the query parameter “amazonid” to the link in question. In other words, if your Amazon Associates ID is “blart”, instead of linking to:
http://www.makeeasymoneywithgoogle.com/index.html
Link to:
http://www.makeeasymoneywithgoogle.com/index.html?amazonid=blart
You can do this when linking to any of the pages on this site. Your Amazon Associates ID is preserved throughout the user's session. Try it and see! I want to sell the book and I'm happy to throw a bit of Amazon's money your way for helping me sell it.
This is possible, by the way, because this is a totally dynamic site, much like my personal site EricGiguere.com. See the latter for the details.
Is PlanetLab being used for automated distributed click fraud?
This last week's been very interesting, not all in a good way. Yes, my book Make Easy Money with Google goes on sale in two days (June 17, 2005). Yes, I was excited to get my first copy of the printed book. But Google wants me to take my ads off of MakeEasyMoneyWithGoogle.com, the book's companion site (and host site for this blog, of course). Not ideal for a site describing an AdSense book, is it?
The problem isn't with my site, actually, but with what someone's doing with it. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, I had some suspicious activity in my access logs. Different IP addresses across the world were accessing this site's home page at regular, 20-second intervals. What's more, some of those accesses were obviously clicking ads on the page, because my impression count and clickthrough rates went skyhigh. I reported this to Google and they confirmed that it appeared to be fraud and deducted the bogus earnings from my account. All well and good, though annoying because a few of those clicks would have been legitimate.
Unfortunately, the zombies came back. This time I decided to be a bit forensic about it. I noticed some interesting patterns in the hostnames that matched up to the IP addresses. A lot of them had “planetlab” host names or “CoDeeN” user agent strings. Looking up what PlanetLab and CoDeeN are, it seems to me that someone was using the PlanetLab and CoDeeN infrastructures to do automated, distributed click fraud. Sophisticated system, it would seem, although I don't know why they'd keep pounding on a single site like mine for so long. More on this as I figure it out.
Two uses of AdWords for AdSense publishers
Over at feedbuzzard, Rick talks about taking the plunge and signing up for a Google AdWords account to advertise his site. I'll let you read his AdWords blog entry for the details, including my comment about using AdWords to publicize Make Easy Money with Google.
What Rick's realized, of course, is one of the two uses of AdWords that AdSense publishers can take advantage of. There is another use, however, that is even more interesting, and that's using AdWords to figure out how much a keyword can pay. I discuss both uses, especially the latter, in the book. The interesting thing about using AdWords to determine keyword values is that you can do it without even signing up for an AdWords account — you just run through the first few steps of the AdWords campaign creation process, after which you can abandon the session before you need to commit to spending any money. Definitely worth checking out.